Gus What?!

I added a built-in anonymous feedback mechanism to my RX-Plugin a couple of months ago. My goal was to increase the amount of feedback I get by making it easier for you to send it.

I can now report that this has been a great success. I am getting a lot more high-quality comments than ever before. Many of you even reported on problems that gave me plenty of new insights and perspectives on what and how to fix things. This is exactly what I need to turn a good product into a great product. This will soon be out on all of my plug-ins.

Please keep the feedback coming. Just remember to be precise and clear as possible on what problems you encounter. Don’t be afraid to post a question on my blog. I will do my best to resolve as many problems as I can.

On another note, the recently launched gallery.aim.com site is causing a noticeable increase in the activation rate of my plug-ins. This affirms my belief in the power and efficiency of these kinds of central distribution sites. I am glad it is finally here. Unfortunately, the activation step has stumped a few of you. I will be improving this process soon.

I meant to post this on Friday. But late is better than never.

Speaking of late is better than never, here is a picture I took last March when the Airbus A380 flew around Washington for a demonstration flight. I barely caught it as it was coming in for a landing. Here it is over AOL’s CC6 (Creative Center 6) Building.

A closeup of the A380 from that same image:

Enjoy your holiday.

Where would you rather be?

Larger (1MB) version after the jump…

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Technorati Profile

Gus What?! turned 1 today. Looking at the results, I wrote 45 posts or an average of 3.75 posts per month and got a total of 84 comments. Not a bad start considering I survived the first year of blogging.

When I started this blog, I knew there were three things that had to happen in 2006 for me to actually keep it going: 1.) The introduction of Open AIM, 2.) The release of AIM 6.0. and 3.) Write some Plug-ins. I had no problem writing plug-ins and was deeply involved with AIM 6.0. However, I had no control over Open AIM—This is AOL’s greatest gift to the AIM community and it will only get better. I think the traffic statistics prove I was right. Traffic did not really pickup until the AIM 6.0 betas started rolling out in October and has been doubling every month since. I was pleasantly surprised that January continued the trend.

My plan for this year is to post twice as much useful information as last year. I will also be working on two more plug-ins that should be out by mid-year (Unfortunately, my day job keeps me from doing it full-time.) As an update to my first post… The AIM 6.0 about window still has me in the credits:

Thanks for reading this blog and I look forward to another great year.

Just in case you ever wanted to do this: Here is how to turn off the lights (and keep them off) when it is controlled by a Novitas sensor like the one shown below and you don’t have the optional manual switch wired to it. You will need a small flat-head screwdriver for this simple procedure.

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I got “Blog-Tagged” by Greg in his blog at aimInfo. Thanks Greg! So, the rules are that I have to mention five things you might not know about me and then tag five other people. So, here they are in no particular order:

1. I regularly attend the annual summer-time Gipsy Kings concerts at Wolf Trap or the Nissan Pavilion.
2. Every major piece of electronics in my house is plugged into a UPS: TVs, DVRs, Stereo, PCs, and all my networking equipment are on a UPS. Yes, even my SlingBox is on one!
3. I’m an Eagle Scout. “Be Prepared” is most definitely my motto.
4. I am from Argentina and fluent in Spanish.
5. I just got the 4-volume “James Bond Ultimate Edition” DVD collection as a gift.

And now I get to tag others. Here are some people I work with or have referenced something on my blog: Casual Penguin, Help -> About AIM, Just Suppose, Kevin Farnham, and Shawn Christopher. Happy “Blog-Tagging”…

This build includes a few bug fixes and a slight change in the idle icon colors.

I also incorporated a suggestion from a fellow beta tester to provide an option to suppress the balloon tips in the tray icon when you return from idle while Idle Lock was passively activated and when Idle Lock is deactivated on an IM sent.

I am always open to suggestions on how to improve this plug-in. You can leave a comment or e-mail me at gus at this domain.

BTW, the spam comment filtering plug-in I recently installed has been 100% effective. Go Hash-cash!

Today was the first time I actually bought a TV episode online. I never thought I would need it. But I figured, hey, its available, not too pricey, and I just had to make sure I didn’t miss the previous episode of Battlestar Galactica. Bought it on iTunes for a $1.99. Downloaded and watched it commercial free. Is it me or is it truly sold in wide-screen format? What fun.

Why did I break down and buy an episode? Well, my DVR box failed to record it when it first aired. Was it programmer error? I’d like to think no, but I am not sure what happened. I have been too busy to QA my own DVR I guess. Luckily, iTunes saved me.